India's Largest Shipyard Receives Email Threatening to Blow Up Navy Installations

The INS Vikrant, the first aircraft carrier to be built by India, is presently at the Cochin Shipyard in Kerala, a state in the far south of India. It began its sea trials in August this year, and it is slated to be commissioned next year.

Kerala state police on Monday revealed that they'd received an official complaint from Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) regarding an anonymous email threatening to bomb the INS Vikrant, the aircraft carrier under construction in Kochi.

"CSL received an anonymous email on 25 August 2021," Manoj K, chief of police at Ernakulam Police station, confirmed to Sputnik. CSL is India's largest shipbuilding and maintenance facility in India.

Police are examining a possible connection to terrorism, he said. 

Some of India's media also reported that "the officers of the shipyard received hoax emails". However, the officer did not say this to Sputnik, simply confirming that an "inquiry is underway".

Earlier in July, an Afghan citizen, Eid Gul, was arrested for having allegedly used forged documents to secure employment at the Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL); since then, the area has remained under high security. Eid Gul's case was subsequently handed to the National Investigative Agency (NIA).

In 2019, two employees who were doing painting work on the ship were arrested for stealing certain hardware items from multi-function consoles of the Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS) onboard the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC). The hardware was fully recovered. 

The INS Vikrant, built at the Cochin Shipyard at a cost of more than $3.5 billion, is a 262-metre vessel which has a displacement of 40,000 tonnes. This allows the warship to carry a total of 30 aircraft, including fighters and helicopters. 

India at present has only one aircraft carrier, the Russian-made INS Vikramaditya.